Water-use efficiency and mechanism of drought tolerance in woody plants in relation to climate change and elevated CO2

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CSC - Cost-sharing contracts

Objetivo

The most serious current environment-related problems in Hungary include drought stress (due to climatic change) as well as the strongly polluted state of the natural environment caused by different chemicals. Toxic heavy metals salts are among the major pollutants. There is a continuing need for new approaches in understanding the mechanisms of environmental stress phenomena in plants. Despite the long history of research into their effects of the environment, researchers are still in the phase of discovery and hypothesis formation concerning the understanding and, if possible, predicting and counteracting ecological implications of drought and heavy metal pollution. It seems that oxidative processes play an important role in the damaging effects of both drought and heavy metal stress. Various antioxidative systems in plants (e.g. thiols) have been hypothesized to be involved in mediating the response of plant cells to various stress effects. In this grant application we are asking for support to study stress phenomena in plants induced by drought stress as influenced by elevated CO2 levels and exposure to heavy metals. Our goal with he planned research work is to characterize the response reactions of woody and agricultural plants leading to reduction of the above stress and to determine the drought tolerance and the heavy metal detoxication capacity of various plants. We would like to investigate the role of the antioxidants ascorbic acid and gluthathione (and their related enzymes) in plant defense reactions. The possible modification of water-use efficiency and heavy metal tolerance of plants by influencing their ascorbic acid and glutathione content will also be investigated. In separate experiments a test method will be developed to study the effects of drought and heavy metals on Mycorrhiza. Although the nature of the research work planned is predominantly academic, weare planning to develop new methods a/to improve water-use efficiency of plants and b/ to use heavy-metal stress resistant plants to cleanse soil polluted by these toxicants.